I have that same old meerschaum yet--the same that I clasped to my lips
in the days that are gone, and through whose fragrant, wavy clouds, as
they floated round my head, I saw--sometimes clear and bright, sometimes
dimmed by a mist of rising tears--visions of childhood's joyous hours,
of schoolboy's days, of youth, with its vague dreams and longings, of
early manhood, and its high hopes and proud anticipations.
I smoke it still, though the tobacco be not always the choicest--for one
cannot be fastidious in the army, and sutlers do not keep much of an
assortment--and still it brings me sweet dreams, though of a different
color.
Yes, old and tried friend, times have greatly changed in the few years
that we have been together. Sons have been torn from fond parents;
brothers have snatched hasty kisses from tearful sisters, and marched
off to the tap of the drum with firm step and flashing eyes, while,
beneath, the heart beat low and mournfully; young men and maidens, in
the rosy flush of dawning love, have parted in sadness, but proudly
facing the duty and bravely trusting the future and the eternal Right.
Over many a noble fellow, on the bloody fields of Shiloh and Antietam
and Stone River, the wings of the death-angel have fallen; at many a
hearthstone there is mourning for the brave that are dead on the field
of honor--though it is a royal sorrow, and a proud light gleams through
the fast-falling tears.
But you and I, my faithful comrade, are together still. Next to my heart
I have carried you many a weary league; many a dreary and, but for you,
comfortless night we have bivouacked together. Time and roughing it have
made their marks on both of us. Scars mar your polished face, now
changed from spotless white to rich autumnal russet; and mine, too, the
sun, and wind, and other smoke than that of Orinoko have darkened. You
have lost your ornamental silver cap, and amber-mouthed stem, and I my
polished two-storied 'tile' and the tail of my coat. But never mind; if
we are battered and bruised, and scratched and scarred, and knocked
around till the end of time, we will never lose our identity; and if we
live till I am as bald as you are, we will always be good friends. Won't
we, old boy, eh?
And the old boy murmurs an unqualified assent.
Puff! puff! Your face lights up as brightly, and your fragrant breath
comes as freely here by the campfire, as when we were at home, and had
our slippered feet upon the mantelpiece before the old-fashioned
'Franklin,' and were surrounded by our books and our pictures, and the
numerous _little things_, souvenirs, perhaps valueless in themselves,
but highly prized, and reluctantly left to the tender mercies of the
thoughtless and unappreciating.
And it is these _little things_ that the soldier misses most and most
frequently longs for. It is not the feather bed or the warm biscuits
that he thinks of, but that dainty little penwiper, with his initials
worked in it, and those embroidered slippers, that _she_ gave him. He
would not give a contractor's conscience for sweet milk; but he would
like to have his smoking cap.
I once seriously thought of sending home for a certain _terra cotta_
vase for holding cigars--a mantelpiece ornament; but I happened to
remember that I had cigars very seldom, and a mantelpiece not at all,
and concluded not to send.
Many of these little things the young soldier will bring from home with
him, in spite of the pooh-poohs of practical parents, and carry with
him, in spite of the sneers of thoughtless comrades. I know a fellow who
carries in his breast pocket the withered, odorless skeleton of a
bouquet, that was given him on the day he left home, and who will carry
it till he returns, or till it is reddened with his blood. And when I
see a man, in the face of ridicule and brutal scoffing, through long
marches and weary days of dispiriting labor, clinging with fond tenacity
to some little memento of the past, I set him down as a man with his
heart in the right place, who will do his country and God good service
when there is need. And--it is well to practise what one admires in
others--I confess that I have a smoking cap that I have often packed
into my knapsack, at the expense of a pair of socks; and I would rather
have left out my only shirt that was off duty than that it should have
failed to go with me. Yes, dear girls, your little presents, perhaps
forgotten by you, by us are fondly cherished; and around them all hover,
like the perfume of fresh flowers, fragrant memories of the merry days
gone by, and dreams of starry eyes and laughing lips, of floating
drapery and flashing jewels, and moonlit summer nights in the dear
Northland.
May your eyes ne'er grow dim, nor your smiles fade away!